Snyder says Detroit school plan will cost $715M
Detroit — Gov. Rick Snyder said Monday his plan to create a new debt-free Detroit school district will cost the state $715 million over 10 years, amounting to $50 for every child in Michigan.
Snyder renewed his efforts to overhaul Detroit’s fractured education system Monday ahead of the long-expected introduction of legislation to create new layers of oversight in exchange for the state assuming operating debt piled up by emergency managers in recent years.
The accumulated operating debt of Detroit Public Schools is expected to top $515 million by June 2016, Snyder said.
Snyder’s proposed Detroit Community School District would need $200 million to cover $100 million in start-up costs for capital improvements of facilities and $100 million to account for continued declining enrollment in the city.
The new Detroit school district would still be liable for paying down $1.5 billion in unfunded pension liabilities. The governor has resisted a Detroit school reform coalition’s call for DPS to be exempted from continuing to pay its share of pension costs for current and former employees.
The Republican governor’s proposal would cost the state’s School Aid Fund about $70 million annually for the next decade.
Snyder said the sales tax-dependent School Aid Fund is healthy enough to afford continued annual increases in funding for all schools.
“This does not have to come at the expense of any cut,” Snyder said.
The governor said he plans to offer legislation this month to overhaul Detroit’s troubled education system, which includes DPS, the state-run Education Achievement Authority and charter schools.
This is the second time in six months that the governor has detailed plans to overhaul education in Detroit.
Snyder’s revised plan contains a few tweaks from the proposal he detailed in April.
Originally, the governor had proposed the creation of a new financial review commission to have oversight and veto power over spending decisions of the new school district in Detroit.
In the revised plan, Snyder calls for using the existing Financial Review Commission Snyder says Detroit school plan will cost $715M:
